Battlestar Jumps the Shark?
I’ve been a big Battlestar Galactica fan since I was introduced to the show in the middle of the second season. At first I shied away from watching episodes as the dark, somewhat depressing storyline made my stomach heavy always waiting for the next shoe to drop (which it always did in the worst way possible).
I grew to love the story, the characters and to some degree the dark atmosphere (what can I say I’m somewhat of a pessimist and also enjoy dark humour). As I got further into it and started listening to the episode commentary I realized that some of my other favorite Scifi (Star Trek: TNG and DS9) was also written by executive produce Ronald D. Moore and I got on board for the usually intense ride that showed up each week. Even when the series took unexpected turns (such as moving the story ahead by a year in the blink of a eye) the resolutions of the twists were always good and made the overall story stronger.
When I started this post it was purely to say how absurd the casting of John Hodgman in last weeks episode was, which in itself is a possible jumping the shark moment, but after watching this week’s episode I have a bad feeling that that might have only been the beginning. Despite all the exposition (and there was a lot) and the questionable casting (which made it so I couldn’t take a brain surgery scene seriously) the episode from last week was very solid and did a good job of explaining one of the major mysteries of the in a coherent and interesting way.
Fast forward to this week…
This week everything seems to have fallen completely flat. The sections that are supposed to be the big emotional releases (Adama falling apart because of what he has to do to save the ship and the baby dying) leave something to be desired and don’t grab the you the way they should. This is usually the difference between a good acting and bad acting as sometimes these things just click. The part that really got me was the inconsistency in the story. How does the chief have a sudden 180 degree turn of opinion on whether to stay or not right after getting his rank back and convincing Adama to use the cylon material to save the ship? The only answer is they needed a tie in the votes so they just decided to change his character’s stance on a whim.
The worst offender of this is when they decide to give the religious cult guns for no reason other than Baltar (a man we know to be honest and trustworthy…) says there is civil unrest. No kidding! We just finished a mutiny arc where Adama was almost executed by his own men, and he’s willing to just give guns away to one group of civilians to keep another in check?! Other than a ham handed metaphor for US foreign policy there is no logical reason for this to happen and just seems like the writing are creating a possible huge problem from nothing just to have more conflict in the show.
I will watch the final four episodes and hope that they deliver on the great storytelling and mystery that I’ve come to love but I doubt I will watch the spin off series as without the action there is definitely something missing in the formula that makes Battlestar great. So here’s to lots of explosions in the finale.